1 Introduction

The NanoPi M1 Plus is designed and developed by FriendlyElec for professionals, enterprise users, makers and hobbyists. It is only two thirds the size of a Raspberry Pi. FriendlyElec has made a Debian, Ubuntu-Core and Android images ready for it.

The NanoPi M1 Plus uses the Allwinner H3 Soc. It integrates Gbps Ethernet, IR receiver, video/audio output, WiFi & Bluetooth, onboard microphone and supports DVP/Camera/HDMI and CVBS. It has a serial debug port. Its GPIO pins are compatible with those of a Raspberry Pi.

VDD_5V: 5V power output5V. When the external device’s power is greater than the MicroUSB’s the external device is charging the board otherwise the board powers the external device.The input range is 4.7V ~ 5.6V

5.3.2 Comparison of Linux-3.4.y and Linux-4.x.y

Our Linux-3.4 is provided by Allwinner. Allwinner has done a lot of customization work which on one hand contains many features and functions but on the other hand incurs overheat issues. If your application needs to use VPU or GPU you need to use the 3.4 kernel based ROM and use a heat sink together with your board.

Our Linux-4.14 is based on the mainline kernel. We will keep this kernel with the latest one released by Linus Torvalds. This kernel is stable and doesn't generate heat that much. If your application doesn't need to use VPU or GPU we recommend you to use this kernel.

5.3.3 Linux

5.3.3.1 Boot from TF

FriendlyCore / Debian / Ubuntu are all based on a same Linux distribution and their installation methods are the same.

Extract the Linux image and win32diskimager.rar files. Insert a TF card(at least 8G) into a Windows PC and run the win32diskimager utility as administrator. On the utility's main window select your TF card's drive, the wanted image file and click on "write" to start flashing the TF card.

Insert this card into your board's BOOT slot and power on (with a 5V/2A power source). If the PWR LED is on and the STAT LED is blinking this indicates your board has successfully booted.

5.3.3.2 Boot from eMMC

5.3.3.2.1 Flash OS with eflasher Utility

Extract the eflasher Image and win32diskimager.rar files. Insert a TF card(at least 4G) into a Windows PC and run the win32diskimager utility as administrator. On the utility's main window select your TF card's drive, the wanted image file and click on "write" to start flashing the TF card.

Insert this card into your board's BOOT slot and power on (with a 5V/2A power source). If the green LED is on and the blue LED is blinking this indicates your board has successfully booted.

Connect the board to an HDMI monitor or an LCD and a USB mouse, and select an OS to start installation.

If your board doesn't support HDMI or no monitor is connected you can select an OS by running the following command:

$ su root
$ eflasher

The password for "root" is "fa".Type a number and enter to select an OS, then type "yes" and enter to start installation:
After installation is done shutdown the system, take out the TF card, power on your board again and it will boot from eMMC.

If you want to flash other OS image to eMMC download the whole directory "images-for-eflasher" in the CD and extract the packages in the directory to the "FRIENDLYARM" section in your SD card.

5.3.4 Android

5.3.4.1 Boot from TF

Note:before make a MicroSD card to an Android image card you need to format this card.

On a Windows PC run the HDDLLF.4.40 utility as administrator. Insert a TF card(at least 8G) into this PC and format it. After formatting is done take out the TF card, insert it into the PC again and format it with Windows internal format utility to format it to FAT32. After this formatting is done take out the card.

Extract the the Android image and PhoenixCard_V310.rar . Insert the TF card you made in the previous step into a Windows PC and run the PhoenixCard_V310 utility as administrator. On the utility's main window select your TF card's drive, the wanted image file and click on "write" to start flashing the TF card.

(In the screenshot an Android image file for the NanoPi M1 Plus was selected. You need to select a correct image file for your board.)

Insert this card into your board' BOOT slot and power on (with a 5V/2A power source). If the green LED is on and the blue LED is blinking this indicates your board has successfully booted.

5.3.4.2 Boot from eMMC

5.3.4.2.1 Install Android to eMMC from TF Card

Extract an Android image file and the flashing utility PhoenixCard_V310.rar, insert a TF card(at least 8G) to a windows PC and run PhoenixCard as administrator. On the PhoenixCard Window select your TF card's device and your wanted Android image file, set the mode to "mass production" and click on "Flash" to start flashing the Android image to eMMC.

(In the screenshot an Android image file for the NanoPi M1 Plus was selected. You need to select a correct image file for your board.)

After flashing is done take out the TF card, insert the TF card to your board's TF card slot. Connect your board to an HDMI monitor, power on your board(note:you need a 5V/2A power adapter) and you will see a green process bar on the HDMI monitor. After flashing is done take out the TF card and reboot your board and it will be rebooted from eMMC.

6 Working with Debian

6.1 Ethernet Connection

If the board is connected to a network via Ethernet before it is powered on, it will automatically obtain an IP after it is powered up.

6.2 Wireless Connection

Under Debian you can manage your network with NetworkManager.
After Debian boots click on the network icon on the bottom right of the task bar a NetworkManger menu will pop up and all the available networks will be listed. If there is an active wireless network you will see something similar to the following screenshot:
You can click on a WiFI AP and connect your board to it.
For more details refer to:NetworkManager.

For either an SD WiFi or a USB WiFi you can connect it to your board in the same way. The APXX series WiFi chips are SD WiFi chips. By default FriendlyElec's system supports most popular USB WiFi modules. Here is a list of the USB WiFi modules we tested:

Index

Model

1

RTL8188CUS/8188EU 802.11n WLAN Adapter

2

RT2070 Wireless Adapter

3

RT2870/RT3070 Wireless Adapter

4

RTL8192CU Wireless Adapter

5

mi WiFi mt7601

You can use the NetworkManager utility to manage network. You can run "nmcli" in the commandline utility to start it. Here are the commands to start a WiFi connection:

Change to root

$ su root

Check device list

$ nmcli dev

Note: if the status of a device is "unmanaged" it means that device cannot be accessed by NetworkManager. To make it accessed you need to clear the settings under "/etc/network/interfaces" and reboot your system.

Start WiFi

$ nmcli r wifi on

Scan Surrounding WiFi Sources

$ nmcli dev wifi

Connect to a WiFi Source

$ nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "PASSWORD" ifname wlan0

The "SSID" and "PASSWORD" need to be replaced with your actual SSID and password.If you have multiple WiFi devices you need to specify the one you want to connect to a WiFi source with iface
If a connection succeeds it will be automatically setup on next system reboot.

If your USB WiFi module doesn't work most likely your system doesn't have its driver. For a Debian system you can get a driver from Debian-WiFi and install it on your system. For a Ubuntu system you can install a driver by running the following commands:

$ apt-get install linux-firmware

In general all WiFi drivers are located at the "/lib/firmware" directory.

6.3 Setup Wi-Fi Hotspot

Run the following command to enter AP mode:

$ su root
$ turn-wifi-into-apmode yes

You will be prompted to type your WiFi hotspot's name and password and then proceed with default prompts.
After this is done you will be able to find this hotspot in a neadby cell phone or PC. You can login to this board at 192.168.8.1:

$ ssh root@192.168.8.1

When asked to type a password you can type "fa".

To speed up your ssh login you can turn off your wifi by running the following command:

$ iwconfig wlan0 power off

To switch back to Station mode run the following command:

$ turn-wifi-into-apmode no

6.4 Install Debian Packages

We provide a Debian Jessie image. You can install Jessie's packages by commanding "apt-get". If this is your first installation you need to update the package list by running the following command

apt-get update

You can install your preferred packages. For example if you want to install an FTP server you can do this:

apt-get install vsftpd

Note: you can change your download server by editting "/etc/apt/sources.list". You can get a complete server list from [1]. You need to select the one with "armhf".

6.5 Set Audio Device

If your system has multiple audio devices such as HDMI-Audio, 3.5mm audio jack and I2S-Codec you can set system's default audio device by running the following commands.

After your board is booted run the following commands to install alsa packages:

After installation is done you can list all the audio devices by running the following command. Here is a similar list you may see after you run the command:

$ aplay-l
card 0: HDMI
card 1: 3.5mm codec
card 2: I2S codec

"card 0" is HDMI-Audio, "card 1" is 3.5mm audio jack and "card 2" is I2S-Codec. You can set default audio device to HDMI-Audio by changing the "/etc/asound.conf" file as follows:

pcm.!default {type hw
card 0
device 0}
ctl.!default {type hw
card 0}

If you change "card 0" to "card 1" the 3.5mm audio jack will be set to the default device.
Copy a .wav file to your board and test it by running the following command:

$ aplay/root/Music/test.wav

You will hear sounds from system's default audio device.
If you are using H3/H5/H2+ series board with mainline kernel, the easier way is using npi-config。

6.6 Login via VNC and SSH

If your board is not connected to a display device you can login to your board from a mobile phone. You need to download and install a "VNC Viewer" from here on a mobile phone and login to the board via VNC at port 1. Its default password is "fa123456".
Here is a screenshot which shows how it looks like when users login to the board from an iPhone via VNC:
In our case our board's IP address is 192.168.1.230. You can login via SSH by running the following commands:

$ ssh root@192.168.1.230

The password is fa.

6.7 Connect to USB Camera(FA-CAM202)

The FA-CAM202 is a 200M USB camera.
Refer to this link for more details on how to connect to a FA-CAM202:
Connect NanoPi M1 to DVP Camera CAM500B
In Debian, click on "other"-->"xawtv" on the left bottom of the GUI and the USB Camera application will be started. After enter "welcome to xawtv！" click on "OK" to start exploring.

6.8 Use OpenCV to Access Camera

The full name of "OpenCV" is Open Source Computer Vision Library and it is a cross platform vision library.

Make sure your board is connected to the internet and an HDMI monitor, Boot Debian and login.

Install OpenCV libraries:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install libcv-dev libopencv-dev

Refer to the instructions in the previous sections to make sure the camera works

Compile and run a code sample（Official Code Sample in C++ provided by the OpenCV organization):

$ cd/home/fa/Documents/opencv-demo
$ make
$ ./demo

6.9 Connect to DVP Camera CAM500B

The CAM500B camera module is a 5M-pixel camera with DVP interface. For more tech details about it you can refer to Matrix - CAM500B.
connect your H3 board to a CAM500B. Then boot OS, connect your board to a network, log into the board as root and run "mjpg-streamer":

$ cd/root/mjpg-streamer
$ make
$ ./start.sh

The mjpg-streamer application is an open source video steam server. After it is successfully started the following messages will be popped up:

In our case the board's IP address was 192.168.1.230. We typed 192.168.1.230:8080 in a browser and were able to view the images taken from the camera's. Here is what you would expect to observe:
The mjpg-streamer utility uses libjpeg to software-encode steam data. The Linux-4.x based ROM currently doesn't support hardware-encoding. If you use a Linux-3.x based ROM you can use the ffmpeg utility to hardware-encode stream data and this can greatly release CPU's resources and speed up encoding:

7.2 FriendlyCore's User Accounts

If your board is connected to an HDMI monitor you need to use a USB mouse and keyboard.

If you want to do kernel development you need to use a serial communication board, ie a PSU-ONECOM board, which will

allow you to operate the board via a serial terminal.Here is a setup where we connect a board to a PC via the PSU-ONECOM and you can power on your board from either the PSU-ONECOM or its MicroUSB:
You can use a USB to Serial conversion board too.
Make sure you use a 5V/2A power to power your board from its MicroUSB port:
For example, NanoPi-M1：

FriendlyCore User Accounts:

Non-root User:

User Name: pi
Password: pi

Root:

User Name: root
Password: fa

The system is automatically logged in as "pi". You can do "sudo npi-config" to disable auto login.

Update packages

$ sudoapt-get update

7.3 Configure System with npi-config

The npi-config is a commandline utility which can be used to initialize system configurations such as user password, system language, time zone, Hostname, SSH switch , Auto login and etc. Type the following command to run this utility.

7.5 Setup Program to AutoRun

7.6 Extend TF Card's Section

When FriendlyCore is loaded the TF card's section will be automatically extended.You can check the section's size by running the following command:

$ df-h

7.7 WiFi

For either an SD WiFi or a USB WiFi you can connect it to your board in the same way. The APXX series WiFi chips are SD WiFi chips. By default FriendlyElec's system supports most popular USB WiFi modules. Here is a list of the USB WiFi modules we tested:

Index

Model

1

RTL8188CUS/8188EU 802.11n WLAN Adapter

2

RT2070 Wireless Adapter

3

RT2870/RT3070 Wireless Adapter

4

RTL8192CU Wireless Adapter

5

mi WiFi mt7601

You can use the NetworkManager utility to manage network. You can run "nmcli" in the commandline utility to start it. Here are the commands to start a WiFi connection:

Change to root

$ su root

Check device list

$ nmcli dev

Note: if the status of a device is "unmanaged" it means that device cannot be accessed by NetworkManager. To make it accessed you need to clear the settings under "/etc/network/interfaces" and reboot your system.

Start WiFi

$ nmcli r wifi on

Scan Surrounding WiFi Sources

$ nmcli dev wifi

Connect to a WiFi Source

$ nmcli dev wifi connect "SSID" password "PASSWORD" ifname wlan0

The "SSID" and "PASSWORD" need to be replaced with your actual SSID and password.If you have multiple WiFi devices you need to specify the one you want to connect to a WiFi source with iface
If a connection succeeds it will be automatically setup on next system reboot.

If your USB WiFi module doesn't work most likely your system doesn't have its driver. For a Debian system you can get a driver from Debian-WiFi and install it on your system. For a Ubuntu system you can install a driver by running the following commands:

$ apt-get install linux-firmware

In general all WiFi drivers are located at the "/lib/firmware" directory.

7.8 Setup Wi-Fi Hotspot

Run the following command to enter AP mode:

$ su root
$ turn-wifi-into-apmode yes

You will be prompted to type your WiFi hotspot's name and password and then proceed with default prompts.
After this is done you will be able to find this hotspot in a neadby cell phone or PC. You can login to this board at 192.168.8.1:

$ ssh root@192.168.8.1

When asked to type a password you can type "fa".

To speed up your ssh login you can turn off your wifi by running the following command:

$ iwconfig wlan0 power off

To switch back to Station mode run the following command:

$ turn-wifi-into-apmode no

7.9 Bluetooth

Search for surrounding bluetooth devices by running the following command:

$ su root
$ hciconfig hci0 up
$ hcitool scan

You can run "hciconfig" to check bluetooth's status.

7.10 Ethernet Connection

If a board is connected to a network via Ethernet before it is powered on it will automatically obtain an IP with DHCP activated after it is powered up. If you want to set up a static IP refer to: Use NetworkManager to configure network settings。

After installation is done you can list all the audio devices by running the following command. Here is a similar list you may see after you run the command:

$ aplay-l
card 0: HDMI
card 1: 3.5mm codec
card 2: I2S codec

"card 0" is HDMI-Audio, "card 1" is 3.5mm audio jack and "card 2" is I2S-Codec. You can set default audio device to HDMI-Audio by changing the "/etc/asound.conf" file as follows:

pcm.!default {type hw
card 0
device 0}
ctl.!default {type hw
card 0}

If you change "card 0" to "card 1" the 3.5mm audio jack will be set to the default device.
Copy a .wav file to your board and test it by running the following command:

$ aplay/root/Music/test.wav

You will hear sounds from system's default audio device.
If you are using H3/H5/H2+ series board with mainline kernel, the easier way is using npi-config。

7.13 Connect to DVP Camera CAM500B

For NanoPi-M1-Plus the CAM500B can work with both Linux-3.4 Kernel and Linux-4.14 Kernel.
The CAM500B camera module is a 5M-pixel camera with DVP interface. For more tech details about it you can refer to Matrix - CAM500B.

connect your board to camera module. Then boot OS, connect your board to a network, log into the board as root and run "mjpg-streamer":

$ cd/root/mjpg-streamer
$ make
$ ./start.sh

You need to change the start.sh script and make sure it uses a correct /dev/videoX node. You can check your camera's node by running the following commands:

The above messages indicate that "/dev/video0" is camera's device node.The mjpg-streamer application is an open source video steam server. After it is successfully started the following messages will be popped up:

Here are some details for mjpg_streamer's major options:
-i: input device. For example "input_uvc.so" means it takes input from a camera;
-o: output device. For example "output_http.so" means the it transmits data via http;
-d: input device's subparameter. It defines a camera's device node;
-y: input device's subparameter. It defines a camera's data format: 1:yuyv, 2:yvyu, 3:uyvy 4:vyuy. If this option isn't defined MJPEG will be set as the data format;
-r: input device's subparameter. It defines a camera's resolution;
-f: input device's subparameter. It defines a camera's fps. But whether this fps is supported depends on its driver;
-q: input device's subparameter. It defines the quality of an image generated by libjpeg soft-encoding;
-n: input device's subparameter. It disables the dynctrls function;
-fb: input device's subparameter. It specifies whether an input image is displayed at "/dev/fbX";
-w: output device's subparameter. It defines a directory to hold web pages;

In our case the board's IP address was 192.168.1.230. We typed 192.168.1.230:8080 in a browser and were able to view the images taken from the camera's. Here is what you would expect to observe:
The mjpg-streamer utility uses libjpeg to software-encode steam data. The Linux-4.14 based ROM currently doesn't support hardware-encoding. If you use a H3 boards with Linux-3.4 based ROM you can use the ffmpeg utility to hardware-encode stream data and this can greatly release CPU's resources and speed up encoding:

The above messages indicate that "/dev/video0" is camera's device node.The mjpg-streamer application is an open source video steam server. After it is successfully started the following messages will be popped up:

"ir-keytable -t" is used to check whether the receiver receives infrared signals. You can use a remote control to send infrared signals to the receiver. If it works you will see similar messages as follows:

7.19 Access GPIO Pins/Wirings with WiringNP

The wiringPi library was initially developed by Gordon Henderson in C. It contains libraries to access GPIO, I2C, SPI, UART, PWM and etc. The wiringPi library contains various libraries, header files and a commandline utility:gpio. The gpio utility can be used to read and write GPIO pins.
FriendlyElec integrated this utility in FriendlyCore system allowing users to easily access GPIO pins. For more details refer to WiringNP WiringNP

7.20 Run Qt Demo

8 Make Your Own Debian/Ubuntu

8.1 Use Mainline BSP

The NanoPi M1 Plus has gotten support for kernel Linux-4.x.y. For more details about how to use mainline u-boot and Linux-4.x.y refer to :Mainline U-boot & Linux

8.2 Use Allwinner's BSP

8.2.1 Preparations

Visit this link [2] and enter the "sources/nanopi-H3-bsp" directory and download all the source code.Use the 7-zip utility to extract it and a lichee directory and an Android directory will be generated.You can check that by running the following command:

$ ls ./
android lichee

Or you can get it from our github:

$ git clone https://github.com/friendlyarm/h3_lichee.git lichee

Note: "lichee" is the project name named by Allwinner for its CPU's source code which contains the source code of U-boot, Linux kernel and various scripts.

8.2.2 Install Cross Compiler

Visit this site download link, enter the "toolchain" directory, download the cross compiler "gcc-linaro-arm.tar.xz" and copy it to the "lichee/brandy/toochain/" directory.

8.2.3 Compile lichee Source Code

Compilation of the H3's BSP source code must be done under a PC running a 64-bit Linux.The following cases were tested on Ubuntu-14.04 LTS-64bit:

Enter the lichee directory and run the following command to compile the whole package:

$ cd lichee
$ ./build.sh -p sun8iw7p1 -b nanopi-h3

After this compilation succeeds a u-boot, Linux kernel and kernel modules will be generated
Note: the lichee directory contains a cross-compiler we have setup. When you compile the source code it will automatically call this cross-compiler.

8.2.4 Compile U-boot

Note:you need to compile the whole lichee directory before you can compile U-boot individually.
You can run the following commands to compile U-boot:

8.2.6 Clean Source Code

9 Applications under Android

9.1 IR Controller(RC-100)

You can use FriendlyARM's IR controller(RC-100) to navigate the Android system.
Here is a list of the function keys on the RC-100 IR controller

Key

Function

POWER

On/Off

F1

Search

F2

Open Browser

F3

Enable/Disable Mouse

UP

Move Up

DOWN

Move Down

LEFT

Move Left

RIGHT

Move Right

OK

OK

Volume-

Turn Down Volume

Mute

Mute

Volume+

Turn Up Volume

SETTING

Go to Setting Window

HOME

Go to Home Window

BACK

Go Back to the Previous Window

After Android is loaded for the first time you need to follow the prompts on Android's GUI to enter the main window and then press F3 to enable mouse and complete the setup process by navigating "up", "down", "left", "right" and "OK".

9.2 Play 4K Video

Visit this the test-video directory of this link download link and download the 4K video file: 4K-Chimei-inn-60mbps.mp4 and copy it to an SD card or USB drive.
Boot Android on your M1 Plus and insert this SD card or USB drive to it. After locate the 4K video file with ESFileExplorer click on and play it with Android's Gallery player.
In our test playing this 4K video file from a USB drive worked better.

10 Make Your Own Android

10.1 Preparations

Visit this download link and enter the "sources/nanopi-H3-bsp" directory and download all the source code.Use the 7-zip utility to extract it and a lichee directory and an Android directory will be generated.You can check that by running the following command:

$ ls ./
android lichee

Or you can get it from our github:

$ git clone https://github.com/friendlyarm/h3_lichee.git lichee

Note: "lichee" is the project name named by Allwinner for its CPU's source code which contains the source code of U-boot, Linux kernel and various scripts.

Compilation of the H3's BSP source code must be done under a PC running a 64-bit Linux.The following cases were tested on Ubuntu-14.04 LTS-64bit: